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“A Woman's World”: The University of California, Berkeley, During the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Charles Dorn
Charles Dorn*
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College Department of Education
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The fairer sex takes over and the campus becomes a woman's world. They step in and fill the shoes of the departing men and they reveal a wealth of undiscovered ability. The fate of the A.S.U.C. [Associated Students of the University of California] and its activities rests in their hands and they assume the responsibility of their new tasks with sincerity and confidence. —Blue and Gold, University of California, Berkeley, 1943

During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley—then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education—made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. Historically rooted in a mission of Christian fellowship, by the 1940s the University YWCA held progressive positions on many of the nation's central social, political, and economic issues. Throughout the war years, women dedicated to promoting civil liberties, racial equality, and international understanding led the organization in its response to two of the most egregious civil rights violations in U.S. history: racial segregation and Japanese internment.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , November 2008 , pp. 534 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 History of Education Society 

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References

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2 Throughout this essay I refer to the Berkeley campus of the University of California as “Berkeley.” By World War II, seven additional campuses comprised the university system, including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, the Medical Center and Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, the Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside, the University Farm at Davis, the Scripps Institution of Biological Research in San Diego, and the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton (east of San Jose).Google Scholar

3 I am grateful to Sharon Bettinelli, executive director of the University YWCA, for access to the organization's archives.Google Scholar

4 Chartered as a land-grant institution in 1868, Berkeley received the bulk of its funding from the California State Legislature and endowment income. Given the continuing financial struggles the university confronted as a result of the Great Depression, however, when millions of dollars were cut from the university's income, and the relatively large size of the student body, a significant decline in Berkeley male enrollments had the potential to cause serious challenges. Moreover, state funding declined by almost $200,000 during the war years, leading university administrators, including University President Robert Gordon Sproul, to seek additional sources of revenue from the federal government and defense industries. On the history of U.C. Berkeley, see John Aubrey Douglass, The California Idea and American Higher Education (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); Johnson, Dean C., The University of California: History and Achievements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Stadtman, Verne A., The University of California, 1868–1968 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970); Otten, C. Michael, University Authority and the Student: The Berkeley Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); Pickerell, Albert G. and Dornin, May, The University of California: A Pictorial History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); Pettitt, George A., Twenty-Eight Years in the Life of a University President (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); Ferrier, William Warren, Origin and Development of the University of California (Berkeley: Sather Gate Book Shop, 1930); Jones, William Carey, Illustrated History of the University of California (Berkeley: Students’ Cooperative Society, 1901).Google Scholar

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128 Barrett, Edward L., The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigation of Subversive Activities in California (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1951).Google Scholar

129 Clemens, Standing Ground and Starting Point, 172.Google Scholar

130 Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times. Google Scholar

131 Eisenmann, , Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965, 5.Google Scholar

132 Aptheker, Bettina, “Gender Politics and the FSM,” in The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, ed. Cohen, Robert and Zelnik, Reginal E. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 129–139.Google Scholar